I told Lulu to chill out. She did so, grudgingly.
Very said, “We’re just about done here, dude. Why don’t you and Lulu hop in my ride while Detective Sensenbrenner and I wrap things up?”
We got into his battered Crown Vic while Very and the narrow detective exchanged a few more words. Then they shook hands and Very climbed in behind the wheel, bristling with anger.
“Something wrong, Lieutenant?”
“That elongated bastard just dissed me,” he said, biting off the words before he started up the car, made a screeching U-turn and sped back toward the Hutch.
“Dissed you as in . . . ?”
“Quote: ‘We don’t expect these sorts of things to happen in a place like Willoughby.’”
“Wait, wait, I know how the rest of this one goes. Quote: ‘It’s more like the sort of thing that you expect to happen in New York City.’ Unquote. Am I right?”
“How’d you know?” he acknowledged sourly.
“I just spent a bloody summer in small-town Connecticut, remember? These sorts of things never, ever happen there either.”
“When you dis my city, you’re dissing me and the job that I do,” he fumed. “He’s lucky I didn’t punch him in the face.”
“You know, maybe you should think about Prozac.”
“Will you shut the fuck up about Prozac?”
He got back on the Hutch and floored it back toward the city while Lulu stood in my lap with her nose stuck out of the window and I tried to ignore the back spasms that I was developing from his car’s total lack of shocks and springs.
Very’s two-way radio squawked at him from the dash. He yanked it from its bracket, held it close to his mouth. “This is Very. Go.”
A voice at the other end responded, accompanied by so much static and distortion I don’t know how he understood a word of what was being said. But he did. “Gotcha. What else? . . . No shit? Oh, this just keeps getting better and better. And how about the old man? . . . Got it. Got it. Got it. Solid.” He returned the two-way radio to its bracket and wove his way through the late evening traffic in thoughtful silence, his left arm hanging out his open window.
I looked over at him, mystified.
He glanced at me, frowning. “What?”
“You sign off by saying ‘Solid’?”
“Why, you got a problem with that?”
“Broderick Crawford always said ‘Ten-four’ on Highway Patrol. I thought that was de rigueur.”
“Well, I say ‘Solid.’ Seriously, are you planning to annoy me the whole way home?”
“Can’t say. Is it okay if I get back to you on that?”
He shot a concerned look at me. Something he’d heard in my voice. “You okay, dude?”
“Considering that in the past few hours I’ve encountered the bone-crushed bodies of two people whom I knew rather well, I think I’m doing just dandy. What did the man on that squawk box thingy have to say?”
“They got a list from the phone company of the calls Tommy O’Brien made and received on your phone today. At 10:55 A.M. he called Guilford House and spoke to his editor, Sylvia James, who is now dead in the street.”
“Dead in the lane. Who else?”
“At 11:33 he received a call from Mel Klein’s private line at the law offices of Klein, Walker and Pignatano in Babylon, Long Island. At 12:38 P.M. he called Deep River Press and spoke to his girlfriend and would-be editor, Norma Fives, who I understand once threw a Stanley Bostitch stapler at Sylvia and nearly blinded her. At 2:07 P.M. he called the big man himself, Addison James, at his penthouse on Riverside. And last but not least, at 2:39 P.M. he called his wife, Kathleen, at their apartment in Stuyvesant Town. So far that makes five people who potentially knew that he was hiding out at your place. Six if Yvette James overheard their conversation or her husband told her.”
“I wonder why Mel Klein called him.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I also wonder why Tommy called Addison. Can’t imagine what he had to say to him.”
“We could always ask the old guy.”
I glanced at Grandfather’s Benrus. It was nearly ten P.M. “Tonight?”
“In the morning. It’ll be too late by the time we get back to the city.”
“I assume someone has informed him about Sylvia?”
“Two Homicide officers were with him until a half hour ago.”
“How did he take it?”
“He totally creeped them out. Kept quizzing them on exactly how many times the car ran over her and which bones were broken. Then he pulled a bottle of Dom Pérignon out of his office fridge, popped it open and poured himself a glass.”
“Was Yvette with him?”
“Right by his side. She tried to give him a hug when he got the bad news. He told her to leave him the hell alone.”
“Yeah, it’s one of those warm, fuzzy marriages.”
“I understand he was a spook during the Second World War.”
“An original spook. OSS.”
“You figure he killed people?”
“I don’t figure it. I’m sure of it.” I glanced across the seat at Very. “Any idea where Addison was this evening?”
“He and the missus dined at home. Check this out, a chef from Peter Luger came over and made them an aged porterhouse for two in their kitchen. Can you imagine being so rich that a chef from Peter Luger comes to you?”
“When you’re that rich, he’ll even cut your meat for you.”
Very shook his head. “This sure does go off in a whole lot of different directions, am I right?”
“Very.”
He frowned at me. “Yeah, dude?”
“It goes off in a whole lot of different directions. We know that Yvette James is hooked up with Mel Klein, whose law firm employs Jocko Conlon . . .”
“Yech.”
“Jocko could certainly have accompanied Yvette to my place, whacked Tommy over the head and thrown him off my roof. We know that Tommy’s bitter, estranged wife, Kathleen, is hooked up with Richie Filosi, who has no herniated discs in his back and could certainly have accompanied Kathleen to my place, whacked Tommy over the head and thrown him off of my roof. We know that Sylvia, before all of the bones in her body were crushed, was a substantially built woman. If she thought Tommy was behind the Tulsa snatch I have no doubt that she could have whacked him over the head and thrown him off my roof.”
“I got to say, if it turns out that your boy Tommy did steal Tulsa to use it as leverage, he sure didn’t have much of an exit strategy.”
“He didn’t. Steal it, I mean. He was just a useful putz. Nothing more.”
Very glanced over at me. Once again he’d heard something in my voice that he didn’t care for. “What happened to him isn’t on you. It’s not your fault that he’s in the morgue.”
“Yes it is, Lieutenant.”
“How do you figure it that way?”
“Because he came to me for help and . . .” I trailed off, staring straight ahead at the road in front of us.
“And what, dude?”
“And I failed him.”
Chapter Six
When I awoke the next morning in the middle of that king-size bed in Merilee’s lavish bedroom, my mouth tasting vaguely of library paste, I had no idea where I was. It took me a second to remember. Lulu was sprawled out next to me, fast asleep, tongue lolling from the side of her mouth, which is vastly preferable to when she sleeps on my head. You’ll just have to take my word for that. She stirred as I began to move around in the bed and seemed a bit confused herself as to why we were in Merilee’s apartment but Merilee wasn’t. Not that she was complaining. She likes her creature comforts same as I do.
Groaning from an ache in my lower back, I climbed out of bed, put on my silk target-dot dressing gown and staggered to the front door of the apartment. That morning’s newspapers awaited me in the hallway on a small table outside of the door. Just one of the perks of living in a full-service luxury building.
; I scanned them as I drank my orange juice while Merilee’s shmancy espresso machine did its schmancy thing and Lulu put away her 9Lives mackerel. BOOK ’EM was the non-clever banner headline on the front page of the Daily News. The Post had opted for the even more non-clever LITERARY SPLAT. No question about it, the deaths of Sylvia James and Tommy O’Brien were major tabloid news. Huge enough for the News to bump the story of Janet Jackson appearing topless on the September cover of Rolling Stone to an inside page, and to relegate the earth-shattering Johnny Depp/Winona Ryder breakup to Page Six of the Post. The sober, proper Times featured the story on the front page of its Metro section under the sober, proper headline: DISTINGUISHED PUBLISHER VICTIM OF VEHICULAR HOMICIDE. The subheading read: Bestselling Author’s Research Assistant Found Dead from Rooftop Fall. As was typical with the Times, I had to read between the lines while I drank my first cup of espresso to grasp that there was the slightest potential connection between the two violent deaths, since both the NYPD and the Willoughby police spokesmen had taken pains to point out that there was no evidence of a connection, even though the timing and the fact that Thomas O’Brien had worked for Sylvia’s legendary father had to lead anyone who had the approximate IQ of a melted ice cube to wonder.
I toasted a baguette and slathered it with some of the blackberry jam from the wild bushes that grow on Merilee’s farm, munching on it with my second cup of espresso. The weather forecast was for a humid day in the upper 80s. There was also a 20 percent chance of widely scattered showers, which is the sort of weather forecast that I’ve always found exceptionally helpful. After I showered, I stropped Grandfather’s razor, shaved, powdered my neck with Floris No. 89 talc and dressed in the slate-gray linen suit from Strickland & Sons, a contrasting pale gray shirt and a powder-blue knit tie. I was trying to decide whether I should go with my trilby or my Panama fedora when Very buzzed me from the lobby. I went with the trilby.
When Lulu and I emerged from the elevator, Very was waiting outside at the curb leaning against his battered cruiser, wearing his trademark black T-shirt, jeans and motorcycle boots, his jaw working on a piece of bubble gum. It was already warm and hazy out.
“How did you sleep?” I asked him.
“Like a log. Best night’s sleep I’ve had in months. Thanks, Lulu. You work wonders.”
She let out a woof in response.
“That was her way of saying ‘No problemo, amigo,’” I translated for him.
“So she speaks Spanish?”
“Little bit. But her French is terrible.”
“We tossed Tommy O’Brien’s studio apartment in Hell’s Kitchen,” he informed me. “Place is a real dive. He was living on the cheap.”
“I don’t suppose you’re about to tell me that you found two copies of a 783-page opus called Tulsa, are you?”
“Nope, just cockroaches. Really big ones, like out of a fifties horror movie.”
“There’s no chance the book’s hidden there somewhere?”
“We didn’t tear up the floorboards, but the place was searched good and thorough. The book’s not there, dude. Where are you going with this?”
“Lieutenant, I haven’t figured out much yet, but there’s one thing of which I’m absolutely certain. Everything that happened yesterday goes back to what did or didn’t happen to Tommy outside of that copier shop on Friday night. When we find Tulsa, we’ll find out what this mess is really about.”
He got in behind the wheel and started up the Crown Vic, revving its engine impatiently. I opened the passenger door. Lulu jumped in ahead of me as I got in, my lower back reminding me how many hours we’d spent bouncing around in it last night. “What’s the plan for this morning?”
Very made a shockingly illegal U-turn and headed west on West 83rd Street. “We pay a visit to Addison and Yvette James, then Kathleen O’Brien and her boyfriend, Richie, okay?”
“Fine. Tell me something I don’t know from reading the morning papers.”
“No prob. For starters, our canvass of the high-rise building on the corner near your building turned up nothing. No one saw anything happen on your roof. Neither did the fifth-floor rear residents on West 94th. The ME has confirmed that prior to his fall, Tommy was hit on the back of the head with an extremely hard object, like a piece of pipe. Therefore, his death has been officially classified as a homicide, as opposed to a suicide. We conducted a thorough search of the stairwell as well as the trash cans up and down the block. Zilch. His killer took the weapon with him.”
“So you have nothing.”
“Slow down, I’m not done yet. A couple of my men spoke to Addison James’s doorman. He says that the old gent left the building approximately two hours before Tommy’s murder and went strolling off dressed in a white linen suit. He was carrying a walking stick but no umbrella.”
“It was still pouring rain.”
“Which my men pointed out to the doorman.”
“And . . . ?”
“And Mr. James told him that the rain reminds him of Maui. He owns a lavish estate there, I gather.”
I mulled this over as we went spelunking in and out of the potholes on West 83rd. “So Addison’s in play?”
“Most def. Who gets them when he dies?”
“Gets what, Lieutenant?”
“Those multimillion-dollar retreats that he has scattered all over the place.”
“Sylvia would have, presumably. But now that she’s gone, you’d figure Yvette will come into them, unless there’s something in his will that specifies otherwise.”
“Does that sound like a motive or am I crazy?”
“Sounds like one to me. Although you are crazy.”
“Thanks, dude. I really needed to hear that.”
“You would have been disappointed if I hadn’t said it, admit it.”
He weaved his way around the cabs, bike messengers and jaywalkers in our path as he sped along, his jaw working on his gum. “After we talk to Kathleen and Richie, I also want to talk to Mel Klein, Esquire, out in Babylon. And Jocko Conlon. And much as it pains me to say it, you make up for your annoying personality with your amazing instincts. Real, dude, I’m in awe.”
“I appreciate the kind words . . . I think. But will you kindly tell me what you’re not telling me?”
“Before Phyllis Yvette Rittenaur—who by the way is thirty-six, not thirty-two—moved from Larchmont to New York City to seek show biz fame and fortune, she’d been busted numerous times.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“When she was fourteen, she was heavy into shoplifting. And I’m not just talking about lifting a pair of sunglasses from the corner drugstore. She got nailed for trying to walk out the door of a department store wearing an entire outfit that she hadn’t paid for—expensive shearling winter coat, cashmere sweater, flannel slacks, ankle boots, the works. Store security nailed her and called the Larchmont PD, but she was so little and cute and wept so pitifully that they sent her home with a stern warning. By the time she was sixteen she’d graduated to blackmail. She used to babysit little kids, okay? When the father would drive her home, she’d rip her blouse and tell him she’d claim he’d tried to attack her if he didn’t give her a hundred bucks. Got away with it several times, too, until she picked the wrong dad—a law professor—who called the cops on her. She was nailed for extortion, but she was so little and cute and wept so pitifully that the judge let her off with probation and community service.” Very came to a jarring stop at a red light on Broadway. “That’s when she went to secretarial school and learned how to type.”
“This is the part of the story where I have to ask you what sort of parents she had.”
“She didn’t. Her father ran off with another woman before she was born, never to be seen again, and her mother deserted her when she was four. Left her with an aunt, who was a barmaid-slash-hooker. I’m surprised that little Phyllis didn’t end up hooking herself. But she had her sights set higher than that. By age eighteen she’d partnered up with Mick the Quick Rafferty, age
twenty-three, a high-stepping two-time loser out of Bayonne. The pair of them got busted for trying to lift a diamond engagement ring from a jewelry store in Nyack. Mick the Quick played Sir Galahad and took the whole rap—ten to fourteen for armed robbery. It seems he was packing a gun, just to round things out in the stupidity department. They let him out after eight.” The light turned green and off he sped. “By then little Phyllis Rittenaur was now calling herself Yvette Ritt and had moved to New York City.”
“I take it she never studied drama at LIU.”
“Long Island University has no record of her ever being enrolled there.”
“And also that she made up the part about being Joe Heller’s typist.”
“No, that part’s true. She typed for him for two years. But he hit a dry patch and had no work for her, so he passed her along to Addison. Heller was really, really sorry to see her go, he told my officer.”
“I’ll bet he was.”
“She started working for Addison part time but eventually became his full-time typist and bed partner, despite the fact that Sylvia hated her. School me, do you think the old guy knows the real deal about her past?”
“I have zero doubt. I also have zero doubt that he’s ever cared. He was a spook, remember? He has no illusions about people. Do you have any idea where Yvette was when Tommy was getting thrown off my roof?”
“Excellent question.”
“Thank you, I try.”
“The doorman of their building put her in a cab at three. She went to Guillaume’s on West 56th Street, where she had a 3:30 appointment to have her hair and nails done. She also had a facial. Was there until shortly after five. From there she tried on about twenty pairs of shoes around the corner at the Gucci store on Fifth Avenue. They know her well there. She’s a regular customer. Bought two pairs. Came home in a cab with her Gucci bag at around six o’clock, according to the doorman, who told our people she never comes home without at least one new pair of shoes. The doormen call her Imelda Marcos.”
By now we’d reached Addison and Yvette’s building on Riverside Drive. A patrol car was stationed there to keep the press away. Two cops in uniform were on the door. Undaunted, several local TV reporters were doing stand-ups from across the street, using the building as a backdrop.
The Man in the White Linen Suit Page 12